gen x reactions
  • Home
  • Critiquing
  • Listening
  • Reading
  • Tasting
  • Watching

Tag Archives: buffalo

Buffalo, Then (Part One)

punkgrrrl June 28, 2017 Tasting Leave a Comment

Certain neighborhoods can be a magnet to those that inhabit them multiple times over several years. Main Street in Buffalo is no exception. Specifically the section located between Hertel Avenue and Niagara Falls Blvd.

In the 1990’s, Main Street was a destination for high school and college students alike. The main meeting place was a coffeehouse called Stimulance. Inhabiting the space next door to Talking Leaves bookstore, Stimulance offered not only some of the best coffee and bagels in town (they mixed, boiled, and baked them in house) but also events that were geared toward the teen and twenty something Gen Xers that were hanging around at the time. This was before NYS passed the no smoking laws so a night at Stimulance could include not only the stimulation of an espresso laden beverage, but also a pack of smokes which you could buy on the premises in the old fashioned cigarette dispenser between the two unisex bathrooms, located across from the counter.

Upon entering the space, one would be greeted immediately by the friendly, hipster staff. For regulars, a specific coffee cup and a seat at the bar awaited them. A refuge from the cold weather or the aggravation of the daily grind was something that could always be found there. A small area with couches and coffee tables was situated up front, to the left of the door and a stage was setup in the back right corner. Open mic night and poetry readings abounded in this space and most Music and English majors from Buffalo State, UB, and Canisius eventually found themselves on the stage singing or reciting poetry and prose.

Staying open late into the next morning was a feature of all the coffee houses during this period of caffeine excellence in Buffalo and Stimulance was no exception. Patrons would shuffle in from the local bars, after a night of drinking, and sober up over a pack of Marlboro reds and a cup of Fair trade Sumatra. Stimulance was one of the only establishments to brew beans that were ethically sourced and they led the movement to get other coffee houses on board as well. Always forward thinking, the owners were happy to provide the best quality products and stressed the importance of these items in the greater landscape of the coffee industry.

When the smoking laws began kicking in, Stimulance tried to keep up by enclosing the front room for smokers. Once the full indoor smoking law was passed though, Stimulance could no longer remain open. Coffee and cigarettes were so intertwined that they lost large swaths of their customer base causing them to sell the business and move on. Much like Java Temple, Topic, Cybeles, Coffee Bean Cafe, and 3Bs, Stimulance was an institution of coffee in Buffalo that will never be recreated. The 90s were truly a golden age of coffeehouse culture in Buffalo and no matter how many pour overs one ingests it can never replace the feeling one obtained from sitting at the bar at Stimulance, smoking a cigarette, reading the artvoice, drinking a quad shot mocha, and talking about the latest news in the world of culture, activism, or music with a truly interesting barista. Those days are most certainly gone and all that remains are the memories of a better time in Buffalo.

search

tag

45* 70s 90s analog ani baristas buffalo cassettes chris cornell coffee culture digital drumpf education election2020 feminism generationx genx good stuff grunge grunge doctor iphone ipod liberalism linkland links middle children mixtape music nostalgia politics pop culture progressive protest punk punkgrrrl reading is fundamental Safe Scene salons of the 90s social media tech technology x vs boomers x vs y youth

tweet

My Tweets

join

join

read

gen X reactions’s best reads montage
gen X reactions
2 members

a group for gen Xers to share their reactions to literature.

Our top-however-many shelf

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
Vurt
Morvern Callar
Naked
High Fidelity
Slaves of New York
A Certain Age
Kitchen
The Giver
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Bell Jar
Journals
The Virgin Suicides
The Ice Storm
Less Than Zero
Prozac Nation
I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Bright Lights, Big City


View this group on Goodreads ยป

listen

Check Out My Spotify Playlist!

archive

  • September 2022
  • June 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • October 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • March 2020
  • October 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • September 2018
  • April 2018
  • July 2017
  • June 2017

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Member of The Internet Defense League

Theme by ThemesPie | Proudly Powered by WordPress